Monica Wehby on Health Care

Prominent and early opponent of ObamaCare

In 2009, while ObamaCare was rolling down the legislative pike, Monica was a prominent opponent of the ACA. She was enlisted to be in a TV commercial which ran across the nation warning people about the dangers of that bill. Monica got a lot of hate mail
for that ad campaign and had to change her home phone number, but every one of her predictions has come true.

150,000 people have had their health insurance plans cancelled in Oregon. Premiums have increased. Medicare Advantage benefits for our
state's seniors have been cut. The Obama administration is constantly changing its rules and regulations and delaying its mandates. As one person told her, "The Affordable Care Act has made my health insurance un-affordable."

This system is so
flawed that it needs to be repealed and replaced with a patient-centered, market-based approach like the one Monica outlined in November of 2013 that increases access that is actually affordable.

We need more MDs and fewer JDs in Congress

Conger accused Wehby of being too cozy with Oregon's Democratic senator, Ron Wyden, in working on an ObamaCare-like plan and warned that the Oregon GOP should not run a "rich, disconnected Republican" in the fall.

Wehby, whose compensation at Legacy
Emanuel has topped $1 million a year, countered that Conger was the one who has been squishy on opposing the new federal health care law.

And she was quick to insist that Congress needed fewer career politicians and "more MDs and less JDs," the latter
being a reference to those, like Conger, with law degrees.

Wehby said, "It sounds a lot to me like those politicians who voted for ObamaCare and Cover Oregon and who are all of a sudden leading the charge to get rid of the laws they voted for in the
first place," she said. "That's not me." She was clearly referring to the votes Conger took in the state Legislature to establish a state-run health exchange known as Cover Oregon under the terms of the federal health care law.

I was against ObamaCare when it wasn't cool

Conger ran a radio ad that criticized Wehby's support of a health care reform bill--The Healthy Americans Act--that Sen. Wyden drafted with the support of a bipartisan group of senators in 2007. In the debate, Conger said Wyden's plan was "pretty much
exactly the same as ObamaCare" because it had such provisions as a mandate that individuals be insured or face penalties and it set up exchanges with a limited number of acceptable insurance plans. "If it regulates like ObamaCare and it taxes like
ObamaCare and its costs like ObamaCare, it is ObamaCare," he said.

"I was against ObamaCare when it wasn't cool to be against ObamaCare," replied Wehby, noting that she appeared in a 2009 ad opposing the health care plan before it became law. She also
insisted that Wyden's plan had several important differences from ObamaCare: "It was not the same as ObamaCare," she said. "It's a free market-based approach. It had bipartisan support, and it was budget neutral. That is a far cry from ObamaCare."